While Apple Mail Privacy Protection has already forced email professionals to review how they analyze their campaigns, the IOS 17 update will continue to shape our business practice
Apple has launched a beta of its update, scheduled for fall 2023, and Mindbaz developers have been granted access to it. Link Tracking Protection (LTP), as it’s known, tackles link tracking. Here’s how it works.
What’s new with the IOS 17 update and its impact for email marketers
Apple Link Tracking Protection: what does it mean for marketing campaigns?
Apple has warned: the IOS 17 update and, a little later, the macOS Sonoma update, will impact tracking in Apple Mail, Messages and Safari.
Apple is preparing to reduce the number of parameters that can be used in URLs to analyze the results of marketing campaigns. The aim is to strengthen the protection of Apple users’ privacy by reducing cross-website tracking of individuals.
Until now, this tracking has enabled companies to monitor how individuals have browsed a website as part of a marketing campaign, including email campaigns.
Apple will change URLs containing specific parameters by deleting them: the impact will involve links opened in private Safari browsing* from Apple Messages and Apple Mail.
When a user copies or shares a link from these apps, the parameters are stripped from the URLs.
Source : https://knak.com/blog/blog/link-tracking-updates-ios-17/
The impact of Link Tracking Protection on campaign URLs: Example
Here’s an example provided by Apple in their “What’s new in Privacy” video (25’20)
In this example, the initial link has a parameter that would not be allowed by Apple (“click_id”):
Apple will remove the unauthorized parameter from the URL and rebuild the URL to remove the parameter that would allow the individual to be tracked:
The issue
However, you will no longer be able to retrieve the information returned by this parameter.
The full list of parameters affected by the update is listed below in this article.
What about sending emails?
You choose to send an email containing a link with a parameter prohibited by Apple.
When a user clicks on the link in Apple Mail to Safari, the link could be rebuilt in Safari without the tracking parameter. Contact tracking through the parameter will be lost.
This depends on your contact’s use of Safari:
- Do they use Safari?
- Private browsing or “normal” browsing mode?
- What preference has been selected in the “Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection” settings?
- Off: Disabled
- Private Browsing
- All Browsing: “Normal” mode
Read also: Email glossary: definitions and examples
Parameters impacted by Link Tracking Protection
As we write this article, the LTP update is only available in its beta version. Our team, which has access to this version, is gradually discovering the parameters impacted by this update.
| Parameter | Description |
| __hsfp | HubSpot tracking parameter |
| __hssc | HubSpot tracking parameter |
| __hstc | HubSpot tracking parameter |
| __s | Drip.com email address tracking parameter |
| _hsenc | HubSpot tracking parameter |
| _openstat | Yandex tracking parameter |
| dclid | DoubleClick Click ID (Google) |
| fbclid | Facebook Click Identifier |
| gclid | Google Click Identifier |
| hsCtaTracking | HubSpot tracking parameter |
| mc_eid | Mailchimp Email ID (email recipient’s address) |
| mkt_tok | Adobe Marketo tracking parameter |
| ml_subscriber | MailerLite email tracking |
| ml_subscriber_hash | MailerLite email tracking |
| msclkid | Microsoft Click ID |
| oly_anon_id | Omeda marketing ‘anonymous’ customer id |
| oly_enc_id | Omeda marketing ‘known’ customer id |
| rb_clickid | Unknown high-entropy tracking parameter |
| s_cid | Adobe SiteCatalyst tracking parameter |
| vero_conv | Vero tracking parameter |
| vero_id | Vero tracking parameter |
| wickedid | Wicked Reports e-commerce tracking |
| yclid | Yandex Click ID |
Parameters that are not on this list will therefore not, in theory, be affected by Apple’s Link Tracking Protection update. However, it is possible that this list may evolve. We will update this article to keep you up-to-date.
LTP: For Apple users
Apple will be adding a new section to iPhones’ settings: “Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection“.
This option will be limited to private browsing by default. This means that the impact of the LTP update will be relatively limited.
*Apple users will be able to change this option:
- Enable on all browsing
All the above parameters will be consistently filtered out.
- Set filter to private browsing
Tracking will run on public “normal” browsing mode
- Disable LTP filter
Tracking of your campaigns will be consistently enabled
Key dates for Link Tracking Protection
📆June 5, 2023
First beta version of Link Tracking Protection available using a Developer account.
📆 July 12
Public beta release
📆 Mid-September
Release of iOS 17 update
📆 Fall 2023
Release of macOS Sonoma update
What impact for Mindbaz router customers?
Based on the parameter list in this article, the overall conclusions are reassuring for Mindbaz clients:
No Mindbaz-specific tracking parameters are impacted by this update. This means that if you don’t use any of the parameters listed above in your Mindbaz-tracked URLs, none of your URLs will be impacted by this release.
Those using UTMs will still be able to track the impact of their email campaigns unchanged.
Data protection, security and Apple
This isn’t the first update from Apple that shows a trend towards protecting its customers’ data.
In 2021, iOS 15 raised concerns in the marketing community with Apple Mail Privacy Protection (Apple MPP).
Rachel, Lead Product Manager at Mindbaz, talked about the impact of this update, including:
- The end of pixel-based email opening detection in Apple Mail
- The end of IP address-based geolocation detection
This new feature, which is optional like Link Tracking Protection, encourages email specialists to be extra careful when analyzing email campaigns.
Some email routers, such as Mindbaz, have recently added the ability to filter out dummy Apple opens directly in the campaign statistics tab.
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